dox as the frailty of human nature
will allow. A man who faithfully believes at the rate of fifteen
thousand a year should be able to swallow most things and stick at
very little. And there can be no doubt that the canny Scotchman who has
climbed or wriggled up to the Archbishopric of Canterbury is prepared
to go any lengths his salary may require. We suspect that he regards the
doctrines of the Church very much as did that irreverent youth mentioned
by Sidney Smith, who, on being asked to sign the Thirty-nine Articles,
replied "Oh yes, forty if you like." The clean linen of his theology is
immaculately pure. Never has he fallen under a suspicion of entertaining
dangerous or questionable opinions, and he has in a remarkable degree
that faculty praised by Saint Paul of being all things to all men, or
at least as many men as make a lumping majority. What else could be
expected from a Scotchman who has mounted to the spiritual Primacy of
England?

His Grace has recently been visiting the clergy and churchwardens of
his diocese and delivering what are called Charges to them. The third of
these was on the momentous subject of Modern Infidelity, which seems to
have greatly exercised his mind. This horrid influence is found to
be very prevalent, much to the disconcertion of his Grace, who felt
constrained to begin his Charge with expressions of despondency, and
only recovered his spirits towards the end, where he confidently relies
on the gracious promise of Christ never to forsake his darling church.
Some of the admissions he makes are worth recording--

"I can," he says, "have no doubt that the aspect of Christian society
in the present day is somewhat troubled, that the Church of Christ and
the faith of Christ are passing through a great trial in all regions
of the civilised world, and not least among ourselves. There are dark
clouds on the horizon already breaking, which may speedily burst into
a violent storm.... It is well to note in history how these two
evils--superstition and infidelity--act and react in strengthening each
other. Still, I cannot doubt that the most [? more] formidable of
the two for us at present is infidelity.... It is indeed a frightful
thought that numbers of our intelligent mechanics seem to be alienated
from all religious ordinances, that our Secularist halls are well
filled, that there is an active propagandism at work for shaking belief
in all creeds."

These facts are of course patent, but